Topic Summary

Posted by: sloanjh

FYI, there is now an official suggestion thread in the C# section (v0.x). Since Steve is committed to getting the C# version out, it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be another VB version of Aurora, so any new suggestions should go into the C# thread.

Thanks,John

PS - please read the posting guidelines at the beginning of that thread if you are unfamiliar with the way Steve uses the suggestion thread as a tracking database.

Posted by: Erik Luken

Similar to the button to export all designed ship classes as a text file, would it be feasible to have a similar function for racial techs/components/missiles as well? A common issue I run into when discussing Aurora with friends of mine who play it is that attempting to reverse-engineer someone's ships accurately from just the export data is pretty much impossible, and even with the help of the technology summary screen it's a tedious process- especially if someone is using tactics like not making use of the highest tech level available to them for whatever reason, or if a component is simply old.

It'd also be a great boon for people attempting to do any sort of multiplayer interaction that doesn't involve hotswapping database files (design competitions and such, I'm personally setting one such friendly brawl between two folks at the moment which is what prompted this suggestion).

I think a lot of people like that trying to reverse-engineer is not exact. Not to say that sort of button won't be useful

Posted by: Conscript Gary

Similar to the button to export all designed ship classes as a text file, would it be feasible to have a similar function for racial techs/components/missiles as well? A common issue I run into when discussing Aurora with friends of mine who play it is that attempting to reverse-engineer someone's ships accurately from just the export data is pretty much impossible, and even with the help of the technology summary screen it's a tedious process- especially if someone is using tactics like not making use of the highest tech level available to them for whatever reason, or if a component is simply old.

It'd also be a great boon for people attempting to do any sort of multiplayer interaction that doesn't involve hotswapping database files (design competitions and such, I'm personally setting one such friendly brawl between two folks at the moment which is what prompted this suggestion).

Posted by: TMaekler

I haven't tackled the inexperienced fleet penalties yet, so I will bear this in mind when I do. There are some complexities though. Not all orders involve direction and the ship should only stop anyway if you remove the existing order and give a new one. Some form of abandon current order and move to next might be an option (with a delay) but the issue is that the second order may not make sense unless the first is completed. Another option may be that the crew operates on its own initiative until it responds to an order (moving away or toward the enemy depending on morale). In general though Aurora ships all stop when completing their orders list as it would not make sense for them to continue in the same direction.

I see the problems that could arise. Continuing on is mainly important in battle. So maybe just a switch which sets a ship in battle mode (Red Alert) causes movement commands to continue when given a new movement command. Any other command and the ship stops (and possibly leaves Red Alert mode).

Posted by: sloanjh

I haven't tackled the inexperienced fleet penalties yet, so I will bear this in mind when I do. There are some complexities though. Not all orders involve direction and the ship should only stop anyway if you remove the existing order and give a new one. Some form of abandon current order and move to next might be an option (with a delay) but the issue is that the second order may not make sense unless the first is completed. Another option may be that the crew operates on its own initiative until it responds to an order (moving away or toward the enemy depending on morale). In general though Aurora ships all stop when completing their orders list as it would not make sense for them to continue in the same direction.

For the sake of argument, assume the order delay is 30s in the discussion below.

I think the idea here is that when an "interrupt order" is given (where any order that will happen in the next 30s is deleted) the current order queue continues for 30s, at which point Aurora changes the queue to put the new order first. To put it a different way, Aurora would save and continue executing the old queue for 30s, then an interrupt would happen and the old queue would be thrown away and Aurora would start executing the new queue. If the new queue didn't make sense, the TG would stop and do nothing (or try to execute the next order in the new queue until it ran out too), representing command confusion. If one were going to be complete about it, there would actually be a queue of queues to represent "order, counter-order, dis-order": if a player gave an interrupt order at time=0, then gave another at time=10s and another at time=15s, there would be 4 queues instantiated at time=20s (the original plus 3 interrupts) and interrupts would happen at time=30s, 40s, and 45s. Obviously there would be no delay for orders that were planned ahead.

The main reason I'm posting this, however, is that I realized that the above could be generalized in the game mechanics to a general "time delay" mechanism. One of the things I REALLY liked about SA was the ability to send myself a message with a delay of N turns. If the Aurora code had infrastructure to manage delayed events, there are probably other places where it would be useful, e.g. speed of light detection and/or weapons' fire at > 5 light-seconds. At the very least, it would be great to be able to send myself a message that would show up in a week (the old SA functionality)

Posted by: Graham

Is this really true or am I missing something here? Box launches having 0. 15 size vs 0. 25 size should mean 100 Boxes take up the same space as 100*0. 15/0. 25 = 60 max reduced size launchers when I do the math. Changing it to 0. 3 would mean 2:1 ratio or a 2x greater alpha strike, no more.

This doesn't take into account magazine space though. Yes you could get half the alpha strike of box launchers using regular launchers, but now you have half as many missiles. If you want to actually have any advantage and have an appreciably greater quantity of missiles, then your alpha strike potential becomes much lower.

And in terms of box launchers exploding in C#, that just brings them back inline with magazines, although the explosion chances are higher. Even then by the nature of box launchers, it is unlikely you will be taking damage with missiles still intact, and it is easy to launch all missiles the second the armour of your ship is breached.

The balance issue I have is that it is basically impossible for a beam focused fleet to combat box launched strikes, and the disadvantages of using box launchers are currently fairly minor IMO.

Posted by: Steve Walmsley

Would it be possible for C# Aurora to change the movement mode when issuing new orders? ATM a ship stops where it is when giving a new order and then resumes moving when the order is executed. However this is very odd in a close combat or in real life where a ship would continue on its course and speed until the new order is executed. Would love to see that behaviour also in C# Aurora.

I haven't tackled the inexperienced fleet penalties yet, so I will bear this in mind when I do. There are some complexities though. Not all orders involve direction and the ship should only stop anyway if you remove the existing order and give a new one. Some form of abandon current order and move to next might be an option (with a delay) but the issue is that the second order may not make sense unless the first is completed. Another option may be that the crew operates on its own initiative until it responds to an order (moving away or toward the enemy depending on morale). In general though Aurora ships all stop when completing their orders list as it would not make sense for them to continue in the same direction.

Posted by: TMaekler

Would it be possible for C# Aurora to change the movement mode when issuing new orders? ATM a ship stops where it is when giving a new order and then resumes moving when the order is executed. However this is very odd in a close combat or in real life where a ship would continue on its course and speed until the new order is executed. Would love to see that behaviour also in C# Aurora.

Posted by: Titanian

- Box launchers hit while containing a missile will explode in C# Aurora.

Whether or not this has any effect depends on the details. If it works like magazines currently do, than empty magazines get hit first. Also one could launch all missiles (or just a few to create empty launchers, which get hit first) at a dummy target when overwhelming incoming missiles are detected, loosing the missiles is better than loosing the ship after all.

You already can do this via Space Master. Check the diplomacy window carefully with SM turned on.

Yes, but only after the empires have detected each other, and having to manually rename all starting classes per empire for each pair of 8 empires is very much clicking. There is other ways around it, like only sm-creating the ships after the first time increment, and it won't happen to me again, but knowing that does not help when it has already happened after designing and creating all the classes for all these empires. So it might be a function that is nice to have

Posted by: Garfunkel

Would also be useful to have for intelligence info on ship classes, especially on the first increment in multi empire earth starts, where all classes detected during the first increment get random names as the races have not detected each other before.

You already can do this via Space Master. Check the diplomacy window carefully with SM turned on.

Posted by: alex_brunius

In VB6, and in what C# currently looks like, Box launchers seem to be just better than regular launchers 90% of the time.

At the moment 100 Boxes takes up the same space as 20 0. 25 mod launchers and 170 missiles of magazine space roughly, giving you half as many missiles but 5x the alpha strike. And those 0. 25 launchers still have a x100 reload. In C# aurora 0. 25 size has been increased to 0. 3 so the ratio will be even more favourable to the boxes.

Is this really true or am I missing something here? Box launches having 0.15 size vs 0.25 size should mean 100 Boxes take up the same space as 100*0.15/0.25 = 60 max reduced size launchers when I do the math. Changing it to 0.3 would mean 2:1 ratio or a 2x greater alpha strike, no more.

In VB6 and in C#, this means that the enemy will require 5x as many beam weapons to shoot down all of the missiles. In VB6 due to the long range of AMMs, they could engage the single box launcher wave with many salvos, meaning that box launchers could often be worse against fast firing AMMs. due to the lower amount of missiles. However with the missile changes of C#, the range of AMMs has been decreased if I am not mistaken, which would favour one single large wave.

The range of AMMs has been decreased but I don't think it will result in that much less performance for a few reasons:

- VB6 AMMs only needed tiny % of size being fuel, like 1-5% so even if that increase by x4 you still won't need alot of AMM size % fuel to get more range then you need.- Incoming missiles will be slower and larger overall, since they also get hit by the same fuel formula change, and probably get hit alot harder by it ( fuel in VB6 Aurora is a serious concern for ASM as is ).- Sensors changes in C# also limit your ability to extend the AMM cover with a single huge res 1 sensor, so having alot of AMM range won't be very useful in practice.- C# Changes to ECM/ECCM and missile sensors inherently favor ASM and quality over quantity.- Box launchers hit while containing a missile will explode in C# Aurora, and their reload was increased by 6.7 times. (link)

Posted by: Titanian

Good idea. I've added 'Rename System All' and 'Rename Body All' to the System View in C# Aurora.

Even better would be something like 'Rename System/Body for selected races', opening a dialog with checkboxes for all races.

Would also be useful to have for intelligence info on ship classes, especially on the first increment in multi empire earth starts, where all classes detected during the first increment get random names as the races have not detected each other before.

Posted by: Tree

What might be possible is to save systems created in game for future use (assuming version compatibility) and add some tools to modify systems in-game.

That'd be great.Would it possible to also force the game to generate a somewhat customized system? Something like asking for a G2V class star or a planet with a colony cost below 1 or usable Lagrange points, that sort of thing? Maybe not make the game generate the system with a goal in mind but maybe make the game generate a system and trash it instantly if it doesn't fit, until it outputs one that does? With some limit maybe, so that you can't just ask something impossible and get the game locked up forever.That'd preserve some of the surprise, even if you know there's going to be a close to inhabitable planet in the new system, nothing guarantees there won't be an NPR, or Precursors. If you get a G2V star, nothing says there'll be an inhabitable planet, etc.